At the time we recorded this video, the trailers that were release earlier this month had not yet come out. Nor was the announcement that the game's release date would be formally revealed at E3 this year.
As much as those reveals did a lot to warm my heart to the idea of Kingdom Hearts 3 again, I still stand by my earlier statements that Kingdom Hearts 3's hype train started to grow into a massive problem. Part of why the most recent reveals were so important was that they give off the impression that Kingdom Hearts 3 might actually be finished some time soon.
Sam and I also talked about the prospect of shorter, character-focused RPGs and how much we'd be willing to spend on them. I'd like to pose that question to you guys reading this as well:
Would you be interested in a shorter, 4-6 hour RPG?
How much would be willing to spend on it if you are?
Mostly, I want to know if you guys are as into that idea as Sam and I are.
Surprising everyone, we have a lot of good things to say about Kingdom Hearts in this episode.
At the end of this episode, we begin to talk about how A Fragmentary Passage is a solid, 2-4 character piece (that also shows off the technology that will be used in Kingdom Hearts 3). The fact that it is such a concise, yet mostly complete experience is a large part of what makes it so successful.
As much as I love RPGs, the commitment required to finish most of the games in that genre is a huge barrier, especially as I come into a part of my life where I generally don't have to worry about being able to afford games. Persona 5 was one of my favorite games last year, but it's not easy to recommend a 100+ hour game to somebody. And it's especially not easy to dedicate the time to it.
Though it's hardly a great example of the genre, stuff like this and Alpha Protocol shows that it is possible to make RPGs that players don't have to spent months of their life playing. Undertale also did that only a few year ago. I'd love to see more RPGs so this route, if only for the selfish reason that it slides into my schedule more effortlessly.
Settle in, ladies and gentleman, because things are getting self-referential and existential.
It's very ironic to talk about how people watch YouTube content podcast style when the footage for this "Let's Play" got corrupted.
It feels strange to talk about YouTube and how to work around it's many problems in the wake of all the recent controversies surrounding it. With the "adpocalypse", the rise of YouTube criticism in video games, and the rest of the "YouTube culture", it's a subject that probably won't go away anytime soon.
In a way, the whole reason I came up with the queue system in the first place was that the intended way to watch content on YouTube, to follow the recommended videos and keep watching through Autoplay, just didn't fit into my schedule. I found myself annoyed at all of the great content I wanted to watch and missed out on. Thus, the queue was formed.
I know it's weird, and I doubt many other people use systems like that, but it works for me.
Remember when I said we were done with the Kingdom Hearts and considered it closed?
Well, I lied....
It's really painful to listen to how giddy we were to do a Let's Play... knowing that the footage corrupted and we ended up doing a sudo-podcast anyway. After the incident with Watch Dogs, and the corrupted recording of our first Kingdom Hearts 1 Primer, we swore off ever re-recording something again. We also decided that we wouldn't be able to recreate the magic that was this recording.
It's also nice to not be as critical about this game as we have been to other Kingdom Hearts games. Without spoiling the upcoming episodes too much, we had a great time with this recording. We had some criticisms to be sure, but this was largely 2 hours of praise.
Lastly, kudos to Sam for taking the footage from Gamer's Little Playground and meshing it with our audio to make a final piece that is still largely cohesive. This was quite an effort on his part, and I don't want it to be overlooked.
Here it is, the final episode of the Birth By Sleep segment of the Kingdom Hearts Primer.
Sam and I harp on this a lot, and it's one of our biggest problems with the reveal in Blank Points: One of the easiest ways to lose me in the plot of a big franchise is to give is to negate loss or death in some way. In order to have happy endings, a lot of stories where a major character makes a sacrifice or gets killed off will have their death or the cost of their sacrifice "restored" in some way.
Get away from the primer for a second, this is one of my least favorite storytelling devices. I won't pretend to speak for Sam, but for me I never cared for this saccharine view of loss. In the real world, when people make sacrifices, it is highly unusual for those sacrifices to be reversed. And when they are, they usually come with a bigger cost. In my opinion, I've always found the view that "nothing is ever truly lost" to be a very dangerous lesson to teach to young people, because it doesn't give them the skills to cope with loss, and doesn't prepare them to value what they have.
That said, I'm not adverse to happy endings. Loss doesn't have to mean the end, and in the real world most people do cope with loss and move on. They learn for their mistakes and grow into better people for it. So for me, when I saw this scene that promises all the people who have ever sacrificed or suffered in this franchise will one day be saved by Sora (in Kingdom Hearts 3), a part of me was frankly annoyed by the suggestion. In my view, the basically invalidates all the suffering those people went through, and robs the significance of what they did.
Despite my misgivings, I did tear up at seeing everyone full of hope that they would be saved by Sora in the end. Say what you will about Nomura (lord knows I do), but the man knows who to touch the heartstrings. Kingdom Hearts is a good franchise, but I wonder how much further he can push it before it gets too ridiculous for ever die-hard fans like myself to handle.
It's getting close, guys. Big reveals are going on and there's a lot to take in. Buckle up!
So much goes on in this episode that it's difficult to delve into it in a single post. The big problem is something I've talked about multiple times in these write-ups: Birth By Sleep obsessively explains away almost every single detail from previous games by saying that it's something Terra, Ventus, or Aqua did.
But we see another problem in this episode, and towards the end of the last one, where it's not content with just explaining away details in previous entries. In a lot of the endgame dialogue, the characters in this game reuse speeches and phrases that characters in earlier Kingdom Hearts games used. Sora's "part of their heart" speech and Billy Zane as Ansem's infamous "All world's begin in darkness" monologue are taken almost verbatim. Unfortunately, they are also recycled in contexts that rob them of their original meanings.
There is debate as to exactly when Kingdom Hearts "jumped the shark". Some would say it was Kingdom Hearts 2. Others would point to Dream Drop Distance, which we will cover soon. If I were asked where I thought the Kingdom Hearts franchise got too bloated and out of control, I would say this game. Fortunately there's an HD version of this game on the PS3 and PS4, because otherwise it would be criminal for all of this important plot information to be buried in a portable many fans didn't play.
Welcome to the beginning of the end... for Birth By Sleep.
By far my favorite moment of this episode is when Sam, after doing some plot calculus in his head, comes to the conclusion that this game, when taken in context with that which (in terms of release date) came before, makes the whole franchise worse.
Frankly, knowing that every problem in the known universe can be traced back to 3 kids and their inability to communicate makes the whole sorted affair feel like a cosmic waste of time. On top of that, most of the trio's actions, even when are aware of what they are doing, just make things even worse for the ones who need to clean up their mess later.
This is compounded by the sheer stupidity/inconsistency of Eraqus. Despite being this stalwart Templar of Light, he wasn't exactly worth-coming about the dangers of darkness (and his evil rival who covets it).
Sure, I feel bad for the 3 "heroes", but it's hard to be particularly sympathetic to them when everyone (including them) would have been better off if they just got sick and stayed home.
We've suddenly gone from not much happening at all, to a lot happening all at once. Out of all the new topics introduced, there are two big ones: Eraqus and the X-Blade. We'll table the X-Blade talk for now. Instead, I want to focus on Eraqus and his questionable decision making.
The game wants to portray him as an ultimately well-meaning man that has become so blinded by his obsession with the light that his judgement has been clouded. To some degree, this works, particularly in his interacts with Terra. These moments, and the way Terra remembers him, give off the impression of an "All Darkness Must Die"-type Knight Templar figure. While he loves Terra like a son, it's obvious that he doesn't approve of Terra's proximity to the Darkness.
That said, I also believe that Birth By Sleep wants me to think of Eraqus as an intelligence (not omniscient, we have Xehanort and Aqua for that) person in all other respects. If that is the case, he fails miserably. We harped on it a lot during this episode, but I just cannot get over how Eraqus let Xehanort watch the Mark of Mastery exams despite knowing he tried to start the Great War of Kingdom Hearts (For Science!). And on top of that, he neglected to tell his students about this event.
This could be forgiven, but there really is no compelling reason (at least, the game doesn't offer one) for him to make these mistakes. There would be no plot to Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep if not for all the secrecy. Considering how much (and we haven't even gotten started on most of it) of these events tie directly into Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2, Eraqus and our 3 "heroes" just come of this looking completely irresponsible.
This is the last world before we can get back to the main plot.
To make something clear in these posts, I want to say that although we constantly complain about how gullible Terra is, that's not inherently a flaw with either his character or the story. Gullibility is a trait, like any other. It can be good, bad, or somewhere in between.
The real problem comes from the fact that Terra is fooled by the bad guy every single time. No matter how many times he is ruthlessly, consistently fooled, he never takes steps to try to avoid being duped in the future. It's always "Well, I guess I've been duped again. Guess I couldn't do anything about that".
And even that could work, but then it would help if he had some character trait other than "stupid, easy to trick". Just some scenarios where his gullibility generates some interesting dynamics b/t him and more heroic character, or if he grew wise and started raising questions to certain people before he chose to help them. The latter could even mark some strong, much needed character growth.
Instead, the same scenario plays out over and over again. It gets to the point where one can easily predict the plot of almost every world.
Terra will find himself fooled by the bad guys, up until he helps them complete their plans. At this point, once they think they no longer need him, they will double cross him, leading him to realize he'd been duped.
Ventus (Call him, Ven. will show up either slightly earlier/later, and just miss him. While looking for Terra, Ven meets the friendly Disney hero of whatever world he landed on and get sidetracked into helping him for a bit. Once he feels he can do no more, he'll leave while the Disney hero takes care of it from there.
But no, actually Aqua shows up after the other two to tie-up loose ends, learning that she "just missed" her friends.
Well, we were going good for a while, but now is filler time.
We've talked about the whole "Prequel" problem before, and I don't have much to add on that point. That said, Sam is right to note how egregious it is almost every detail in Kingdom Hearts 1 and 2 was explained away by some cosmic mishap involving Terra, Ventus (Call him Ven), and Aqua.
To some degree, every story involves unlikely coincidences. That's what makes them interesting, but the amount of minor, irrelevant detail that gets "explained" in Birth by Sleep is excessive.
And that whole scene with Pete makes Minnie look really bad. Maybe it's a cultural thing between America and Japan, but while Pete's behavior was awful, it didn't warrant exile.
It had to happen eventually. With all LPs, especially with Kingdom Hearts, you reach the eventual filler episode.
It's just that we spent this episode talking about filler in Kingdom Hearts. It's a subject I've pontificated over numerous times in this series. I see no need to go over it again.
Welcome to Greek Mythology... where everything is made up and the points don't matter.
To give the game some credit, I didn't notice just how badly the timeline for this world got bungled until after I had beaten the game twice and then did this project with Sam. When I had 8 hours between visits to a given world, it was easy to forget some of the particulars. Having AtRiley cut this in chronological order just puts in into perspective.
It's also hard to unsee just how different Aqua is treated in this world compared to other worlds. In all the other worlds, being a woman informs her character, but it never becomes a defining trait of who she is and what she's involved in. Here, Sam's right in that she just gets treated like the token chick. Even if it's only for this part of the game, I'm left quite uncomfortable about that. Not only does it perpetrate harmful stereotypes, but the character deserves better than that.
It's been a long time since I made this commentary. As a result, while I still largely agree with many of the things I said in this series, some of my opinions have changed. The point I was trying to make at the start of this episode regarding player agency and how that sets up expectations doesn't resonate as strongly to me now as it did back then. I've seen a lot of games that put the player in positions where they can't make good choices, like Night in the Woods, and they've turned my opinion around. It's not a crime to rob a player of agency, so long as something compelling comes from it.
The other hard part about writing these posts well after the series was recorded is that sometimes I just don't have any meaningful commentary to add. In those cases, I artificially inflate the length of my post by making meta-commentaries on the meta-commentary I made in the episode. Worse, I won't add anything meaningful to the commentary in doing this. It literally only exists to add words.
That's a terrible writing style that would only come from a hack. Fortunately, I never claimed to be good at writing.
Before I even had the chance to, Sam immediately points out the problem with the scenes in this episode... both of them.
The second problem Sam mentioned was elaborated on in the previous episode's post. In the scene with Terra and Braig, Sam talked about how this game seems to need to explain every single thing that happened in later games as a side effect of what one of our main characters in this game did. That issue I had with Aqua's spell on Kairi is the same problem I had with Braig's scar: There was no need to explain it.
However, that leaves the other elephant in the room. The first problem that Sam pointed out, and my biggest issue with Birth By Sleep, is that when the three met up again, the entire plot would have been solved if they just sat down and compared notes.
Though the footage we borrowed from AtRiley (Thanks to them for allowing us to use it) cut these scenes to be in chronological order, Birth By Sleep is a Rashomon plot. As a player, one plays through each character's story one at a time, and only gets the full understanding once they've completed all of them. On some level, this only works if each character has knowledge the others do not have access to.
But the best way to make sure that happens is to either prevent them from gathering together in the same place, or otherwise disincentive them from divulging information to the other parties. In the scene at the beginning of this episode, where the friends meet up, neither of these conditions hold. Not only are all three of them in the same location, but as friends they would almost automatically open by asking what the other two have "been up to".
Think about a time when you, the reader, reconnected with an old friend. There's an almost 100% that within the first five minutes of talking, you asked them happened to them between when you last saw them and when you met again. It's just something we do, but this doesn't happen in this scene.
This episode contains the second-most annoying scene in Kingdom Hearts.
I spoke earlier about how Birth By Sleep has an almost pathological obsession with "explaining" away all the plot conveniences in the first game. The problem is that in doing so is that not only did we not need those explanations to begin with, but answering those questions raising other, harder to ignore questions.
This scene between Mickey, Aqua, and Kairi is one of the most glaring examples. Here, Aqua senses that "destiny" has brought her and Mickey to Kairi in order to protect her from danger. This explains the following:
Why Kairi can use a keyblade. (Although that requires additional information from later in the game, and that the player was paying attention in both scenes to subtle details.)
Why Kairi ended up at the Destiny Islands in time for the original Kingdom Hearts.
Unfortunately, in the process on answering those two questions in that scene, these other questions got raised:
How did Aqua sense that Kairi needed to be protected? Is it some by-product of her ability to sense darkness (as seen in the Cinderella world)?
Why did her protection take that exact form? Why not instead offer her some practical self-defense tool or some power to be used "only in emergencies"?
What mechanism decided that the world Kairi would end up in was Destiny Island? Furthermore, how is this any different/better than having her end up in Traverse Town?
Why does touching someone else's keyblade give someone a keyblade of their own? Does this mean Jack Sparrow from Port Royal got a keyblade when Sora let him touch his? Why isn't there some more formal ceremony for this, to prevent a bunch of random thugs from getting knowledge of other worlds and ready-access to the very tool to abuse that knowledge?
As a net result, we've now create extra question, since the ones raised far outweigh the number of questions answered.
Worse than that, these initial plot conveniences did not need to be explained. Simply put, the story of Kingdom Hearts works without knowing how Kairi got to the island. It doesn't matter because the story isn't about that. The franchise's overarching narrative is made worse with these answers.
Tune in next time for the actual worst scene in Kingdom Hearts.
Terra is an idiot. You will accept this is move on.
As I said in the episode, a lot of the problems I have with these Disney world stories aren't really the fault of Nomura or of Kingdom Hearts. They are a by-product of some combination of the following:
The original Grimm Brothers' source material
The time period in which these movies were written/animated
Walt Disney being a huge jerk in real life
I point them mostly to show how much different old Disney was to the more modern movies from the same company. Since Kingdom Hearts is, on a fundamental level, a love-letter to the many classic movies almost all of us grew up on, it's unfair to criticize it for drawing on that same source material.
That said, it is also important to highlight some of the choices that were made outside of the influence of the source material. The big one is that Aqua is almost always the one closing up the story of any given Disney world. Not only does that mean she is always a major actor in the events leading to the story's conclusion, but it means she's often a big reason why the Prince of a given story is able to find their true love. Considering that the women in these original stories were often demure, and lacking in any real agency, it's nice that they (deliberately or otherwise) have a female character make the choice to be a driving force in the plot. While it doesn't make up for Kairi, it goes a long way.
As of this update, we're done with the old-school Disney films. All the worlds from here on out will be drawing from the same pool of 90s-2000 era movies that the rest of the franchise uses. There's a lot of content out there that compares old Disney with new Disney, but it's still worth taking a look back to see how far we've come as a society every now and then.
Now what were those magic words to get this episode out? Hmmm....
Oh yes, "Sam, please post the video!"
If there's one thing that Birth By Sleep does a lot better than other games is link the storylines of the individual Disney worlds back into the main plot thread.
Even if something as small as Ven, Terra, and Aqua relating what's going on to their own relationships with each other, having a through-line of some kind gives each story a sense of momentum/pacing that Kingdom Hearts 2 didn't have.
It also helps that the main 3 characters frequently interact with each other. Further, the writers actually do a good job of weaving the themes and subjects of the main story into the tales of the Disney worlds.
And then Aqua went to an old lady's house to murder her and her two children...
It's time Sam finally got the answers he's long sought... some of them anyway.
Even today, I see fierce debates over exactly how much responsibility Terra has for tarnishing his own reputation with the rest of the cast. Among the Kingdom Hearts community, you'll see many people on both the "Terra Is An Idiot" front (my side) and the "Terra Did Nothing Wrong" front (not my side).
In a way, part of his problem comes from sheer circumstance. Any given RPG hero usually just listens to the first few people he/she encounters when they arrive at a new location. Almost every single time, these people happen to be trustworthy enough to for/with. Terra doesn't have that same luck. The "Terra Did Nothing Wrong" crowd would argue that he has no way of knowing that the people he first meets are all morally dubious, and thus can't be held responsible for being duped by them.
While I'll concede that Terra has very poor luck, I would argue against anyone who claims he is absolved of responsibility. It's only natural that people ask questions before they accept jobs or when they meet others. Most of us don't realize it, but whenever we meet someone for the first time, we often start by having them tell us about themselves and vice-versa. The fact that Terra doesn't do this is strange, especially since he's on a mission to learn about the goings-on in other worlds. Ventus has this problem too, but he's lucky enough to meet decent people.
To his credit, once the Evil Queen in Snow White asks him to kill the titular Snow White, he does start to ask questions: But that's only once he's asked to murder another human being. And even though he never had the intention of taking the job, he still accepted it and put himself in a position where it looks like he went for the kill.
A case can be made that he's not 100% responsible, but he does take some share of the blame. As a character trait, that even has the capacity to lead to some tense/dramatic moments. Unfortunately, Birth By Sleep commits one of, in my opinion, the greatest sins a storyteller can make when trying to build up drama. Unfortunately, it's too early to talk about it.
I have a deep seated problem with this game, and Sam hit the nail on the head very early on. This game answers questions that did not need to be answered, and raises new, even more confusing questions as a result.
As we progress through the game, Nomura insists on explaining details that aren't important, rather than elaborating on the ones that are. This initial reveal of Sora saving Roxas before he was even born is just one of those details. Not only does this ruin Sora's appeal as The Unchosen Hero, but it comes out of left field. There's nothing in previous games to even suggest the possibility, and doesn't really add to the story.
I'll point out other such details as we go along. This is only the beginning.
